Pegasus Modeler 3.0

Has anyone ever used the Pegasus Modeler 3.0 or an earlier version?
I cannot count how many times the last version has been in and out of my wishlist. The main reason I've never picked it up is that I'm more into buying clothes than making them. I'm having a hard time buying stuff for Genesis. The stuff I want just hasn't been made yet. Especially in the Hair department. I'd imagine that I could use this to make hair, right?
Anyways, Markus Dunn seems really cool, and so does his software offerings. I think I'll get this one. And then as soon as he updates Clothes Convertor, Maybe I'll get that one, too.

Comments

I am not familiar with Pegasus Modeler. However if you are looking to make hair for genesis I highly recommend Garibaldi Express. I beta tested it and loved it. I was able to make decent simple hair and fur really easily as can be seen in my deviantART gallery. There also is another program Look At My Hair but I have not tried it. Both of these programs will create hair that may be more system intensive than normal hair as they are fiber based.

Wow... very cool... but I work in Carrara for all of my rendering of animations. Well... stills too, but those are rare.
These things are for D|S, and even when 8.5 is done, plugins like that still will not transfer, I don't think. Would they?

Here is the hair I'm using now on V4. I had to really jump through hoops to get it to that state, and I'm still working with it. In that example, you can see some of the different stages it has been in. Like in Stonemason's enchanted forest, she's only using two of the conforming hair models, where in most, she has three. I can't seem to find another solution. This will do fine. But it keeps me from using Genesis more than for just monsters and seconds. And the seconds are already being filled mostly, with Predatron's Lo Rez people. So...

I have no experience with Carrara and very little experience animating. Both hair programs do have .obj export. I'm not sure how viable they would be for animation though. I don't think they are very dynamic. Maybe someone else has experience with that.

Both hair programs do have .obj export. I'm not sure how viable they would be for animation though. I don't think they are very dynamic. Maybe someone else has experience with that.Wendy Loves Cats made me some hair for Rosie using one of them. At that point they become stiff... solid.

Thanks, glad you like my art. Here is a link from my own site to the hair example:http://swawa3d.com/images/stuff/dance_with_the_devil_in_the_pale_moon_light_by_swawa3d.jpgOh, wow! Poor Freak. Looks really good! Those textures are amazing! This is all D|S... Very cool. I use D|S for some of my content creation needs. With its bridge to and from Hexagon, you can perform some real magic with them. I really love the D|S interface and I have aniMate 2, which I love as well. But making my own poses and animations within D|S will require some time practicing. Compared to Carrara, Posing in D|S is a real nightmare for me, whereas in Carrara, it's totally natural, fast and best of all... easy. ;-)

Thank you. Some of the clips that made that movie were simply tests to check their timing. The timing of them is the hardest part at first.I have not done much animation because it takes me forever just to do a few seconds, even working with mocap & aniblocks. :-)

Well that is simply because: I have no experience with Carrara

:-P
It always takes time to render out animations. Carrara helps immensely with its lightning fast ray trace engine. It defaults at a whopping 8 ray trace passes and is really really fast. But animations still make us wait. The trick is, to make tons of three to five second renders. Tons of 'em. Then go and make tons more! Then use a movie making software ( I use Sony's Home Studio HD and love it!) to assemble your clips. One of my favorite aspects of Carrara is how easy it is to work in for like a Daz Studio or Poser like application. Cameras are simple to make and set up. Lights too. Then I save the scene, and open it using the Batch render option just before I go to bed. If I have to work in the morning, I really load it up and let it render all day while I'm at work!
But then I can load the same scene into the Batch Render several time and set different cameras to render with each time. This works really good, as you can have that much more choices when in production.

I have seen some of Wendy's animaitons, looks like she is having a lot of fun, I think she uses iclone.

Thanks, the textures/materials were nice to start but I did modify some a bit and also did a decent amount of post work.

Sounds like you have a nice process going for yourself there. I do use many other programs I just have not gotten heavy into animation yet. I originally started working with DS just for character design but I got really into all aspects of it. Still poses are super easy & fast for me in DS. I often like working mostly in DS for the final scene as it's fast & easy for me to make changes and tweaks to any element at any point in production and I have tons of content to use as a base template I can modify. It might not be best for animation but I have a decent workflow within DS with KeyMate, GraphMate, Animate2 & motion capture files. I probably would not want to do much motion completely from scratch in DS but Keymate does help with that. I would really like to have better collision and physics especially with feet hitting the floor.

If I get really into animation I may look at other solutions, like Carrara, iClone, 3DS Max or MotionBuilder or some combination. Have to research & see what is the best fit. I have my plate full for a while though, trying to master still renders, modeling, rigging, texturing, game design, looking for work, etc... It's already way too much and I need to focus more. I'm also extremely anal with animation which does not help. If there are any jitters, poke through, objects passing through each other or unnatural movement, lack of secondary motion, etc. it really freaks me out. Although sometimes I do wish I could lighten up just so I could create more. Yeah I agree timing is the biggest thing to start with.

...and in the next scene, she guts him! lol
Very cool. You do great work. Love your eye for lighting and shadows, etc.,
Anyways... yeah... my plates a bit too full right now too. Also, KeyMate (which I don't yet have) looks a lot as if it puts Carrara animation sequencer into D|S! Very cool! I'd of course have to try it before I could truly make that claim. But I like what GoFigure has done with that. If my plate wasn't so full, I'd be checking out this new D|S 4.5 Pro I have as well as my new copy of Bryce 7 Pro. Already had Hexagon.
The big new learning curve for me is Project Dogwaffle Pro, Howler. Amazing animation painting software that I'm thinking will be the perfect supplement to Carrara.

...and in the next scene, she guts him! lol
Very cool. You do great work. Love your eye for lighting and shadows, etc.,
Anyways... yeah... my plates a bit too full right now too. Also, KeyMate (which I don't yet have) looks a lot as if it puts Carrara animation sequencer into D|S! Very cool! I'd of course have to try it before I could truly make that claim. But I like what GoFigure has done with that. If my plate wasn't so full, I'd be checking out this new D|S 4.5 Pro I have as well as my new copy of Bryce 7 Pro. Already had Hexagon.
The big new learning curve for me is Project Dogwaffle Pro, Howler. Amazing animation painting software that I'm thinking will be the perfect supplement to Carrara.

Who me? lol. I did not intend to come off sounding like that. :-) I did add Carrara to my list for consideration in the future. I am impressed with how much you were able to produce. Did you mostly use Carrara and DAZ/Poser assets for your work or other stuff? I'll have to look up how compatible it is with all my stuff. Never heard of Dogwaffle before, it looks interesting. Do you plan on using it for textures, post work, animating effects or something else? I just started messing with ArtRage, I love it for traditional style art but it does not have animation features and I have not gotten to using it much yet. http://www.artrage.com/

I also wanted to learn Bryce at some point but since I never get to it I just got Infinito for a quick fix. It's amazing for how simple it is but it is limited.

EDIT: I forgot to mention. KeyMate adds a lot to DAZ for the price but it might not be quite as fully featured and elegant as what more hardcore programs have. GraphMate works well with KeyMate and adds curve features. I wish they worked better with AniMate2 but since that takes over the timeline they are a bit limited in going back and forth. You might already know all this but just in case.

Back to the rest of your post, I came to Carrara from Poser and Daz Studio. I mainly wanted it so bad because I wanted to move into animation work. Daz Studio and Poser both worked great for me, but I wanted to be able to add more morphs to clothes and hair. I looked everywhere for a modeler that had the ability to work with Poser style content - mainly Daz3d content. Victoria 3 and Michael 3. Then V4 and M4 came out. Anyways, when I finally got Carrara, I basically treated it like D|S/Poser. I even bought the Millennium Environment at the same time. I saved so much when I bought it I was able to spend over half of what I saved up on content... and I joined for a year of Platinum Club at the same time. Wow... free content for joining PC, Free content from this Book I bought that included Carrara 6 Pro, and a Pile more free content from Daz when I upgraded the C6 Pro to C7 Pro and they gave me C8 Pro Free when that was to come out in a month or so... it was a couple months I think. But plus all the gear I bought, too...
I was a little kid downloading and downloading all day and into the night... installing fresh content into my runtimes and playing with Carrara ....:ahhh:
So... yeah. I'm a content nut. It's not my fault, though. The artists here are SO good! I have little to no time to make all of this myself. The market is so beaten up with low prices that all of this great 3d awesomeness is very affordable. My opinion, and I'm broke all the time! lol
Well... not so much anymore.

Infinito looks marvelous. I use Daz Studio currently to send content into Hexagon, make a morph, and send it back to D|S. This actually unlocks something in the figure, allowing me to create my own specific list of morphs at the figure level... Like, being able to access the morph dials by just selecting the figure, rather than Head or neck or... you know? Like many hair products dials are in the neck. After sending that through D|S > Hex > D|S, I can set those morphs to how I want the hair to be shaped, and make all of my new morphs, where I just select the hair itself, instead of the neck. Very convenient for animations - because I don't have to open up the hierarchy for everything I want to set to motion. Sorry... I get wordy.

It works really good. And then Carrara is my virtual movie set. I have a special setup in my browser that's just packed full of scenes that are all set up with filming cameras, lighting and FX all set up and ready for when I bring in my actors. Then I bring in aniBlocks, convert those to Carrara NLA clips, which is Carrara's version of how aniMate can run one aniBlock after the next, smoothly, Set the cameras to the action I want... and jam out an animation! :) You know... your movie clip is very cool. The dark spot might get you criticism from some... but don't listen too hard to that. People always look for things to critique. In reality, it would be dark. I thought it was really, really good! Once the ride comes round, and the light hits them, your shader and lighting work pays off. Very good shadows and the textures of the materials looks great!

Dogwaffle simulates a true artist feel when painting using your computer. Since Pro version 6 or earlier... somewhere (I'm new to Dogwaffle), they made it into an animator's dream! You probably noticed that I have a thread dedicated to it here, in the Carrara forum. That's because I thought it would be the ultimate addon for Carrara, especially animators. Now I know I was right... and I'm going to prove it! :)

So how did you find this thread if you don't even have Carrara? (not that anybody minds - it's a pleasure to have you here)

I also love all the amazing content at affordable prices here. I'm working on making more stuff from scratch but there is never enough time to make it all so it's great to mix and match.

I think Infinito is great for simple background terrain but I would probably prefer a program like bryce if the terrain was a major focus. It definitely has it's uses in my workflow though.

I only really got into DS starting with version 4.0 and mostly work with genesis. I love 4.5 and it's the only version I'm using now so not sure if it's different in older versions. When I import custom morphs from a modeler with Morph Loader Pro or when I convert a Deformer to a morph they always end up on the figure level / base node for me. I think that's by default unless it's remembering what I setup. In any case it's easy to drag and drop which node they appear under with the Property Editor. I do like most morphs, especially custom ones on the base node but I like having things like facial expressions and hand gestures on their respective nodes, the head/hands.

Thanks. I've been through art school so I'm totally cool with constructive criticism. I love getting feedback & ideas but I always make the final call based on my vision. Yeah, I thought the lighting really is what made it interesting and dynamic. It's just a distant light parented to an environment sphere that rotates. I am happy with my little clip but I would like to do more complex narratives at some point. It was an experiment to see what I thought of the workflow animating in DS & I was beta testing the motions. My conclusion is that it's great for simple things if I need to do something really complex I may look to other apps. The main flaw is feet collision, I think if some PA can bring that to DS they would make a ton of $.

I'm very happy with ArtRage for traditional brush strokes but I will consider Dogwaffle if I think I need the animation aspects at some point in the future. Interested in seeing what you come up with it.

I found this thread by searching for "Pegasus Modeler 3.0" the title of the thread. I did not intend to get so off topic but it has been interesting talking to you. :-)

I also love all the amazing content at affordable prices here. I'm working on making more stuff from scratch but there is never enough time to make it all so it's great to mix and match.

I think Infinito is great for simple background terrain but I would probably prefer a program like bryce if the terrain was a major focus. It definitely has it's uses in my workflow though.

I only really got into DS starting with version 4.0 and mostly work with genesis. I love 4.5 and it's the only version I'm using now so not sure if it's different in older versions. When I import custom morphs from a modeler with Morph Loader Pro or when I convert a Deformer to a morph they always end up on the figure level / base node for me. I think that's by default unless it's remembering what I setup. In any case it's easy to drag and drop which node they appear under with the Property Editor. I do like most morphs, especially custom ones on the base node but I like having things like facial expressions and hand gestures on their respective nodes, the head/hands.

Thanks. I've been through art school so I'm totally cool with constructive criticism. I love getting feedback & ideas but I always make the final call based on my vision. Yeah, I thought the lighting really is what made it interesting and dynamic. It's just a distant light parented to an environment sphere that rotates. I am happy with my little clip but I would like to do more complex narratives at some point. It was an experiment to see what I thought of the workflow animating in DS & I was beta testing the motions. My conclusion is that it's great for simple things if I need to do something really complex I may look to other apps. The main flaw is feet collision, I think if some PA can bring that to DS they would make a ton of $.

I'm very happy with ArtRage for traditional brush strokes but I will consider Dogwaffle if I think I need the animation aspects at some point in the future. Interested in seeing what you come up with it.

I found this thread by searching for "Pegasus Modeler 3.0" the title of the thread. I did not intend to get so off topic but it has been interesting talking to you. :-)

Not to stoke the Carrara fires, but when you need advanced animation tools, such as editable keyframes, multiple tweeners, graph editor and NLA tracks, take a look at Carrara.

It does look like a nice program with tons of features built in. Looks like it even has dynamic hair creation? I'm currently not in a position to buy and learn yet another large new program. I've already spent tons of time and money on dozens of programs over many years and I'm at a point where I need to focus more on creating and working with what I already know. People (including myself) tend to rant and rave about their programs of choice. Personally, I'm a really big fan of 3DS MAX for most advanced needs. Ultimately it is highly subjective (especially interfaces) and comes down to what best fits each individual's process & needs.

Another bizarroid thing today.
I'm messing around, checking out my new product page, here at Daz3d. Never knew that Mimic Pro for Carrara came with a copy of the stand alone Mimic Pro 3. Clicked on the Mimic Pro heading and it has a download Zip there. No installer... I just created a new folder called Mimic Pro inside my Program Files (86) > DAZ 3D folder, and unzipped into it. Low and behold... Mimic Pro 3 standalone! :) Sweet! That thing makes PZ2's!

heh, well I wrote my review of Pegasus and you must have missed it....

it was charmingly written with a wonderful balance of wit and seriousness.

but seriously

but it just took me fr*&^*&^^5en ages to find this, I took me f65435645365en ages to find it the first time,
so I will leave it here, very valuable but simple stuff if you rig your own in poser or even use xdresser

heh, well I wrote my review of Pegasus and you must have missed it....

it was charmingly written with a wonderful balance of wit and seriousness.

but seriously

but it just took me fr*&^*&^^5en ages to find this, I took me f65435645365en ages to find it the first time,
so I will leave it here, very valuable but simple stuff if you rig your own in poser or even use xdresser

I must have... when did you write it... in here, or the old forum...? I'll look in this forum for it i the meantime... except that... I've been over exhausted this and last week. I've missed (I think) many things during this time. When the old forum went down, I missed a lot when this horrible forum software went live. I can't believe it's still this useless! lol
Anyways... I doubt you were talking about that clothing tearing link, right? That's something else... isn't it?
Like I said... overly exhausted... please pardon my numbness by the time I get here,

a few years ago I used to play ww2 flight sims for days at a time, at the end of it I was so tired i felt as if I'd flown those actual missions..
lucky i realised i was wasting my life.

Pegasus:

if you intend to model a lot of clothes it willsave you time
it speeds up the work flow
the uveeing is simple but no too bad
the tutorial is easy to follow but there needs to be more types of clothes shown in the tut
to make a simple shirt and uvee it would take 15 mins

if you have poser 2012 it's a matter of taking it intoposer and it will autogroup it with the 'transfer tool"
then you need to adjust the fall off zones as shown in the xdresser link

i can't see that pegasus doesn't do anything that carrara won't do
it just makes the process simpler

shirt in pic is 15 mins work, simple but easy, it has two material zones, that's all,
it could do with a normal map etc for wrinkles,

plus it needs buttons ... and a sword :)

PS Dartanbeck, take care of yourself otherwise you will burn out! There gets a point where a " hobby" takes over your life and turns bitter

PS Dartanbeck, take care of yourself otherwise you will burn out! There gets a point where a " hobby" takes over your life and turns bitter

Thanks man. Carrara has really been a help at getting me to relax. I used to wear myself to a puddle of goo in Neverwinter Nights, a Dungeons & Dragons computer game designed from the ground up to make building your own adventure modules a fun and easy experience. Adding content is simple using the utility that comes with the game for creating Hak Packs. You can paly online with any number of players and Dungeon Masters... highly addictive. Now I just work myself silly physically. It burns me out in a big way now. Must be getting old.

So you own Pegasus and like it. I am rather decided on doing all of my modeling in Carrara, since that's where I'll ultimately use it. But I'm not sure how to actually create clothing in Carrara, that could then be used on Daz People. I once heard that Wendy makes cloths work on people in Carrara. I want to ask her how she does it - because when somebody mentioned how she does it... it went right over my head. Some kind of "Follow" command somewhere? But Where?

What always intrigued me about Pegasus is that it has a single purpose. I can create my morphs in Carrara if I could get them into a conforming model - is the trick... for me. Unless I could figure out another way.

I'll truly try not to burn out on this stuff... that would be bad. That's the main reason I stayed small time with my playing drums, too. I never wanted to have it become anything less fun than it is.

load in k4
position clothing correctly
click k4's hip bone (in the instances list on the bottom right)
with shift key down click on object
go to the animation drop down menu at the top and select 'attach skeleton"
then pose k4

select obj
in modelling room
select 'animation mode (top right under edit mode it is middle icon)
once here in the top menus right at the very top you will see a brush icon - the weight painting brush
click on that and over on the right under weight painting make sure you have the rightbone selected
use the brush tool to paint the vertices that are not working on the clothing obj

The weight map does not save, except for cr2 figures, although what the point of that is, is a puzzle.

Hey, head wax - that clothing could do with some DIRT!

Cheers:)

Dart - making conforming clothes for cr2 figures is a long and winding road - once you've made the clothing you need to make groups for each body part. Many different ways of doing this - in Carrara, for instance, you can make a shading domain for each body part, take it into UV Mapper Classic (free) and assign each shading domain to a group. Then into DS and use the legacy FST to rig it. Somewhere In this process you need to get the Poser proportions right.

Much easier to do it for Genesis - simply import it in DS onto the figure and use the transfer utility - done!

Never tried doing it Wendy-style - sounds pretty simple, but the weight-painting in Carrara is the pits for me:)

The weight map does not save, except for cr2 figures, although what the point of that is, is a puzzle.

Hey, head wax - that clothing could do with some DIRT!

Cheers:)

Dart - making conforming clothes for cr2 figures is a long and winding road - once you've made the clothing you need to make groups for each body part. Many different ways of doing this - in Carrara, for instance, you can make a shading domain for each body part, take it into UV Mapper Classic (free) and assign each shading domain to a group. Then into DS and use the legacy FST to rig it. Somewhere In this process you need to get the Poser proportions right.

Much easier to do it for Genesis - simply import it in DS onto the figure and use the transfer utility - done!

Never tried doing it Wendy-style - sounds pretty simple, but the weight-painting in Carrara is the pits for me:)

heh, that's funny Roy :)

enclosed is an object I made in pegasus then took it it into poser 2012 which auto grouped for me in the setup room
I've taken it back into pegasus to show the groups

the joints still need tweaking as far as the falloff zones
and the mesh splits at the groin when K4 does the splits

Never tried doing it Wendy-style - sounds pretty simple, but the weight-painting in Carrara is the pits for me:)

It's exactly as HeadWax just described above your post! It is simple... I just didn't know it was that simple... nor did I know the steps. So I'd imagine that I'd need to first apply a rig to the clothing obj, right?

The weight map does not save, except for cr2 figures, although what the point of that is, is a puzzle.

Hey, head wax - that clothing could do with some DIRT!

Cheers:)

Dart - making conforming clothes for cr2 figures is a long and winding road - once you've made the clothing you need to make groups for each body part. Many different ways of doing this - in Carrara, for instance, you can make a shading domain for each body part, take it into UV Mapper Classic (free) and assign each shading domain to a group. Then into DS and use the legacy FST to rig it. Somewhere In this process you need to get the Poser proportions right.

Much easier to do it for Genesis - simply import it in DS onto the figure and use the transfer utility - done!

Never tried doing it Wendy-style - sounds pretty simple, but the weight-painting in Carrara is the pits for me:)

heh, that's funny Roy :)

enclosed is an object I made in pegasus then took it it into poser 2012 which auto grouped for me in the setup room
I've taken it back into pegasus to show the groups

the joints still need tweaking as far as the falloff zones
and the mesh splits at the groin when K4 does the splits

Yeah... I did already know how to go about making conforming clothes. Poser and/or the new D|S are great helpers for that.
What I didn't know is how Wendy did it. Because she takes clothes that are made for entirely different thing, changes them around, and puts them on People that don't otherwise exist but on her machine... and then makes it all work! She's Genius, I tell you!
So now I have the clues I need! I'm not too fond of weight painting either, but there's some pretty good write-ups around for helping to sort out the headache I've had with it.

Personally, though... I far prefer to just buy stuff that works and use it. I alter it dramatically. But I usually start with something that works out of the box. The time is nearing for me to expand upon that... maybe ;-)

Never tried doing it Wendy-style - sounds pretty simple, but the weight-painting in Carrara is the pits for me:)

It's exactly as HeadWax just described above your post! It is simple... I just didn't know it was that simple... nor did I know the steps. So I'd imagine that I'd need to first apply a rig to the clothing obj, right?

Nope. The clothing follows the rig of the figure. You will most likely need to weight paint it, and you will want to make sure it is sized to the correct proportions. The more polys the better bends. You could even import the .obj file for Poser clothes and use the above methodto attach them.

@ head wax - can't tell for sure, but it looks as if the crotch group doesn't go all the way to the belt at the back? If so, it means that the two legs in the backside area have different parent groups - you don't want abutting groups with different parents, that will cause them to separate. :)